Playing under surveillance: gender, performance and the conduct of the self in a primary school playground

Abstract

This article offers interpretations of play, in a school playground, where adult regulation and surveillance framed its enactment. Children, well aware of being watched, negotiated this through various forms of play, circumscribed by, but also playing with, adult supervision. The children were also subject to the rules governing particular age cohorts and both age and gender figured significantly in the patterns of play observed. The article argues further that, with a strong institutional emphasis on the divisions of the school day and of playtime itself, children also learnt the habits of shifting – from participation to non-participation and between modes of self-conduct. They thus became accustomed to the demands of frequent emotional and behavioural transitions and to the rhythms of the school’s organisation of time.

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